Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Schwing 88 kit overview

The Schwing 88 is the first allround slope model born from the partnership between James Hammond (the father of the Strega, Typhoon, Vector, Minivec, and some others ...) and Tony Fu from SlopeRacer.co.uk.

The Schwing 88 is a very nice looking 2.23m wingspan slope plane which includes improvement from previous JH designs, based on feedbacks and learning experience. It features new combination of airfoils, semi eliptical lift distribution, large control surfaces. The fuselage is slim and with a canopy, but still host a massive ballast tube and the servo tray for 2 servos, the receiver and the battery.

The plane is distributed worldwide by SlopeRacer.co.uk or by its distributors in some countries (i.e SoaringUSA). I received one exemplar of the first production batch.

So, what do you get ?

The wings are fiberglass. The finish is clean and the level of completion is high, as expoxy wipers are done, brass control horns are installed, and a carbon reenforcement is in place in the servo bay. On the root, the hole for the wing connector (green MPX connector size) is done, and the aluminium centering pins are installed. Servo bay can host any wing servos (10 mm), and possibly some micro 12mm servos.

The wing joiner is massive, especially for the plane size. It will certainly survive to all abuses you will do to the plane !

The Fuselage is a nice piece of moulding. It comes with bell crank installed, control snakes in place. The rudder is finished with a brass control horn in place.A large carbon reinforcement goes from the fin to the canopy, the front of the fuselage is in fiberglass to be 2.4 friendly. The Canopy is in fiberglass, painted in black. The 2 pieces tailplanes with control surfaces are also finished.

In the accessories pocket, you find the servos covers (flat), the tail joiners, a superb carbon prepeg ballast tube, to host 19mm ballast slugs, an awasome servo tray, laser cutted, perfectly ajusted to the fuselage (no adaptation required), designed to receive 2 tiny 12mm servos, the receiver, and the battery. I would say that a 4 cells 2/3 C (1500 or 1600 mAh) seems the best choice given the space.

Connecting all the parts together allow to see that everything fit perfectly together. No misaligment, no hard point, no slop. This is excellent.

My only "negative" point, but I was aware of, is that the balance point of the fuselage empty and alone is far rear, at the middle of the boom when usually it is around the trailing edge. This means it will need lots of lead to balance it well. This is not surprising because of the fin, and I remember I had the same problem on the Typhoon, which didn't prevent the plane to fly superbly. According to SlopeRacer, the Schwing would require around 170 to 190g of lead. Overall, I'm very pleased with the kit quality, the level of completeion and the quality of the accessories. Let's have a quick look to the parts weight. This gives the following:

Left Wing: 431g

Right Wing: 423g

Left Tail: 25g

Right Tail: 26g

Tail joiners: 6g

Fuselage: 239g

Wing Joiner: 115g

Ballast Tube + servo tray: 27g

Total: 1292 g

The RC equipement I choose: In the wing, I will use 4 DS 6125-H that I had in stock. For the rudder and the elevator, I will go for 2 x DS6100. They are tiny but strong and powerful servos. I used them already in my Willow and my Needle 100 and I'm very statisfied with them.

Assembly will start in the coming days, and you will be able to follow the progress here. Stay tuned !